An attorney from the U.S. State Department told the International Court
of Justice on Wednesday that it should not put its weight behind global
calls for Israel to withdraw its forces from the occupied Palestinian
territories.
Richard Visek, the U.S. State Department's acting legal adviser, argued
that "it would not, as some participants suggest, be conducive to the
achievement" of lasting peace for the United Nations' highest court to
"issue an opinion that calls for the unilateral, immediate, and
unconditional withdrawal that does not account for Israel's security
needs."
"The court should not find that Israel is legally obligated to
immediately and unconditionally withdraw from occupied territory," said
the U.S. representative.
Visek reiterated the Biden administration's stated support for a
two-state solution but rejected the argument—made by other nations
before the International Court of Justice (ICJ)—that an end to Israel's
illegal, decadeslong occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem is a necessary prerequisite to securing peace and a durable political solution.
"International law does not impose specific time limits on an occupation," Visek said Wednesday.
The U.S. presentation came two days after Paul Reichler, an American lawyer representing Palestine during the ICJ proceedings on Israel's occupation, said that "occupation can only be a temporary state of affairs" and criticized the U.S. government for defending "whatever offenses against international law Israel commits."
"A permanent occupation is a legal oxymoron," said Reichler. "What
makes Israel's ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territory unlawful
is precisely its permanent character."
Among nations participating in the ICJ proceedings on Israel's occupation, only the U.S. and Fiji are urging the court not to issue an opinion that declares the nearly six-decade occupation of Palestinian territory illegal.
Israel has opted not to take part in the hearings, with far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denouncing them as illegitimate.
The hearings come more than a year after the U.N. General Assembly requested
a nonbinding opinion from the ICJ on the "legal consequences" of
Israel's open-ended occupation of Palestinian territory. Just last
month, the ICJ ruled
that Israel's ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip plausibly amounts to
genocide—a characterization that the U.S. and other Israeli allies have
rejected.
Speaking just before Visek on Wednesday, representatives of Colombia,
Cuba, and Egypt condemned the Israeli occupation and implored the ICJ to
act decisively.
“The situation that is taking place in the eyes of all confirms the
ongoing genocide. Innocent victims—girls, boys, women—number in the
thousands," Cuban diplomat Anayansi Rodriguez Camejo said Wednesday,
slamming "those who for years have supported each and every one of the
policies and practices of Israel, which denied the existence of the
Palestinian people and their rights."
"Taken in total," she said, "the unbearable situation of the
Palestinian people the honorable International Court of Justice should
take a stand in the clearest, strongest, and most forceful legal terms
in support of international law."